


And So We Meet Again

by Ozymanreis



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Canon Divergence - The Reichenbach Fall, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Moriarty is Alive, Post-Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 11:45:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10990266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ozymanreis/pseuds/Ozymanreis
Summary: Jim Moriarty is living alone, away from all the chaos and drama of his previous life. No one here knows who he once was, just the nice, if reclusive neighbor that moved in about five years ago. But as it turns out, there's still someone out there that can't let him go.





	And So We Meet Again

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this giftset](http://dynamics-of-an-asteroid.tumblr.com/post/159594911892)

He should’ve known.

The knock at the door could’ve been just like any other: on a dreary Wednesday afternoon, Jim Moriarty, enjoying tea, perhaps could’ve expected his elderly neighbor, Jemma, to bring by scones and talk of her grandchildren living in the colonies. Maybe the postman, needing him to sign for something. Maybe even the police, inquiring about a noise complaint from the house down the way.

Still, he should’ve known.

Even as he set aside his cross-stitching endeavor (it was of the Eagle Nebula), Jim was entirely unsuspecting. No one from his previous life knew he was alive, and even fewer would know he’d relocated to upstate Massachusetts. He’d left Jim Moriarty, Napoleon of Crime, on that rooftop. He’d never, _never_ intended to be found.

And yet.

He could almost feel the blue of his shirt _wrinkle_ , backing away like an offended cat from the sight beyond the door. Didn’t even need to open it, the mottled glass letting through a vague silhouette, one that Jim couldn’t shake from his memory in forty _thousand_ years, much less four. But while the former consulting criminal was many, many things, he refused to let “coward” be one of them.

Heart in his sleeve, daggers in his wrist, the cold metal of the knob burns Jim enough to let him keep his composure. Grounded, even as his eyes found the equivalent of an earthquake, “Sherlock Holmes.” It’s barely more than a whimper, but it’s there, hungry, almost scared, mouth agape as he tried to find the right emotional state for this, super computer of a mind continually pulling up errors.

“James Moriarty.” The detective answers, standing square over his welcome mat, glancing down at it as if to indicate it were a _real_ invitation. As if after _everything_ , he had any right to be there at all.

Jim should close the door. He _wants_ to close the door, maybe throw in a disdainful, yet casual, “I’ve already got my girl scout cookies, thanks” to really highlight the point. However, too shocked for words of denial, his hand stepped in, apparently in disagreement, pulling back the door as he cleared a path.

Sherlock is silent as he enters, even being so thoughtful as to hang up his coat and leave his shoes by the rack. An unfamiliar self-consciousness presses down on Jim’s shoulders, hugging himself to offset it some: Sherlock Holmes is in his house. The place he’d been calling home for long enough that clues might be discerned, the worst of which echoes throughout the halls: _Retired. Not playing games anymore._

_Boring._

“How?” Is the first, instinctive question.

“No way that my brother will ever find you.” Sherlock answers, milling from room to room, settling into the living room, still _standing_ _there_ in Jim’s vision.

“That really doesn’t answer the question.”

“You’re worried, I know, but I covered my tracks well.” He offers an attempt at a comforting smile before getting his “recollection” expression on, face suddenly very still as he rattled off, “I flew into Seattle. Took a train to Bismarck under a fake name. Rented a car, drove to Tulsa. Ditched it, then hitchhiked to Raleigh. Took another train to Boston. Rented another car to here, parked at the city limits, walked the rest of the way. No one could _possibly_ know I’m here.”

“But _how?_ ” Jim repeats, agitation creeping just under his eyes. Before the courtroom, that proud (and frankly arrogant) air Sherlock put on was almost _arousing,_ but at this point he’d spent so long denying it all _that_ - 

“I don’t have an answer.”

“What?” The words don’t make sense, not coming from that mouth. Sherlock Holmes, genius detective, _always_ had an answer. What was it? Would have the last word quibbling with God? Or try to.

“I don’t _know._ ” Sherlock “Not rightly, not quantifiably, I just… _knew_.”

_How hard do you find it, having to say, “I don’t know?”_

“I’m sure I have a justification _somewhere_ in my head, in all the files I have on you, but this time it was about following my gut, as insufficient as that sounds.”

 _Indeed it is._ The annoyance keeping him from fleeing at the very sight of those luscious curls gave way to fatigue, and a panic that barely has enough energy to deny. “Well… you’ve come all this way.” A resigned, soft laugh escapes him, “Tea?”

Sherlock looks over at Jim’s abandoned cup, as if he’d been expecting that question, “If you wouldn’t mind.”

 _I don’t know. If you wouldn’t mind._ There’s something off about Sherlock’s rhetoric, something almost polite, humble. The very idea sparks something long-dead, the very shadow of hope (unrealistic at best, yet it cannot be silenced). “You’ve changed.” Jim notes, not giving Sherlock a full second to process it before he’s back in the kitchen. He doesn’t want justification —he knows there’s a story there, but he tells himself it’s not worth getting into. Offer the detective hospitality, see what he wants, then send him away.

That’s the plan, solidifying as Jim starts the kettle, going back to his tea cupboard to eye over the selection. As if the difference of black, chai, English or Irish Breakfast could satiate whatever the endlessly nosy detective had come here for. But having even a basic framework of a plan made it seem somehow more manageable, like the questions he knew were coming wouldn’t be so painful.

_Why did you leave?_

Jim winces as the words form in his mind. If he were any less worn down by the prospect of _Sherlock_ , he might even be happy to see him again, the closest thing the former criminal had ever had to a friend.

His rumination is interrupted by a hand, placed gently over his. The first thing Jim notices is the cold of it, fitting for someone who’d been outside-

Jim’s head turns, eyes darting up to meet clear blue, “What is-”

He’s cut off by a kiss.

For a second, two seconds, three seconds, Jim absolutely _melts_ into it, suddenly aware of how starved he’s been for touch all these years. Intimate human contact, with someone he-

 _No._ Every cell of his being shivers, organs shifting out of place as he jerks away. “What on _Earth_ do you think you’re doing?” Earth, not Hell, because at least the latter might’ve offered him some peace for a few more years…

“I thought perhaps-”

“ _Now?_ How could you- I-” Jim trips over his words, unable to find the right ones.

“I was a fool.” Sherlock admits quietly, a whisper over Jim’s lips, foreheads leaning in to each other’s, “I saw, but I was too much of a coward…”

The words don’t feel real, they can’t be. Everything happening now, Sherlock, his world for so long, he’d waited… And he didn’t. It was too late for an apology now, wasn’t it? Jim had told himself many times it was.

“Sherlock…” But Jim’s voice trails into a sob, “stop” dying in his throat with the force of just how much he’s _never_ wanted to say it before. How much he’d dreamed of this very moment, fantasized just what those slender fingers felt like on any stretch of his skin…

Even his thoughts trail, struggling to find a reason to stay focused, to push him away. He turns, back to Sherlock, but it only serves to get him pulled _closer,_ a hand sliding down his torso, under his jeans.

Hot breaths on his neck distract him from any further protest. 

 

* * *

 

Jim cries into the linens, puddles forming on the pinstripes of his pillow. Clothes left on the kitchen floor, nothing but the sheet over him, he feels so painfully vulnerable. And he isn’t even alone to deal with it.

“What is it?” Sherlock asks, long fingers sweeping under his eyes, examining the tear, as if he doesn’t quite believe they’re real. An implied _what did I do wrong?_ lurks just beneath the surface.

Jim scoffs, a tiny laugh breaking through, “I was over you, alright?”

Sherlock gives a half-smile, arm curling a bit tighter around Jim’s chest, “You will _never_ be over me.”

The option to be _terrified_ is there, the words too true to be funny (or threaten to be at _this_ rate). Sighing, Jim shifts to fit against the curves of the detective’s body, closing his eyes. “Goodnight, Sherlock.”

He’ll figure it out in the morning.

 

* * *

 

Subconsciously sentimental, Sherlock reaches over, but his heart drops as his hand is met with emptiness. The sheets are cold, wrinkles soothed out from gravity’s slow workings. Eyes opening, he doesn’t need his deductive skills to know, deep in the pit of his stomach, that he’s been alone for a very long time.

His heart sinks beneath the floor when he sees a piece of paper on Jim’s pillow, folded neatly, once, _Sherlock_ carefully scripted on the front.

 

_I can’t._

 

Unsure of how he feels, or even his next course of action — to be sad, angry, cold, or to follow, run, hide in this house forever — a numbed Sherlock takes the paper and stuffs it in his pocket.

Heartbreak is a case for another day.


End file.
